The Gould Ranch Cattle Company is the first producer to have an Irish Blacks® breed herd besides the geneticist Maurice Boney. We have been running Irish Black® breed Cattle since 1986. These cattle were chosen because of their outstanding carcass quality, transition of early maturity and the positive consistent gene traits emphasized in the breed. Our ultrasound records have proven that these calves reflect the same quality year after year.

After breeding Irish Black® breed Cattle for several years the Gould Ranch Cattle Co. began test feeding and marketing freezer beef from our ranch for over ten years now. The idea being to get reaction from consumers and feedback about tenderness, flavor and juiciness of product from herd sires we were using to develop seed stock sires for the general public. The idea being to get an idea at least that our herd sires were producing a quality eating experience from their fed offspring and in hopes that seed stock from these same sires would do the same. We test fed some 150 head per year with a challenge guarantee to any consumer that if the product they received was not superior to or as good as anything they had ever had, we would either replace that product or refund their money no questions asked. In the ten years we received quite the opposite, an on slot of requests for product that at most times we could not keep up with. During this same period of time when bull buyers or prospective customers would come to the ranch we would feed them dinners of steaks and various cuts from our production. In 2010 Guy and Sherry traveled to Utah and enlisted the help of two new seed stock producers to invite producer's from their prospective areas to attend free barbeque steak dinners and see a display of Irish Black® breed bulls. They gave a power point presentation on the Irish Black® breed and have a question and answer time from those producers. Perhaps the greatest revelation that would come from these two meetings would be the response from the producers at both meetings, to their amazement to the quality of the steaks that they had eaten. By the way these steaks were from an Irish Blacks crossed on a miniature Hereford ½ blood. Through the years of feeding, we would discover that due to the high concentration of genetics and tight gene pool represented by our line bred Irish Blacks® breed, the meat quality would be virtually the same on every animal that we crossed our Irish Blacks® breed on.

In the spring of 2011 we brought together several other Irish Black® breed producers with the same desire to talk about creating a branded beef program. By June of that same year we all organized a meeting to bring commercial as well as seed stock producers together and see how much interest could be created from producers, again we fed them Irish Black® breed Steak dinners. The reception was very positive. Over 135 seed stock and commercial producers would attend from 23 different states.

In July we repeated this effort but this time it was to entertain twelve people from the food service and meat fabrication industries, representing five different companies from various different areas of the U.S. and some of these companies would have international sales connections. The primary connection to all of these would be the fact that they were looking for a product that could be sold in a white table cloth restaurant or gourmet hamburger restaurant. Again they ate the steaks, looked at fabricated product and listened to the story; how that quality of this product was 100% based upon geneticresponsibility. Beyond the fact that the consistency of the quality of product, one of the most compelling parts of the story to these purveyors, would be the fact that all of the seed stock within the Irish Black® breed registry had been DNAtyped so that every registered offspring from that day forward would be DNA verified forparentage to registered sires and dams. Then beyond that to the next phase we would and could present them with aproduct that could be DNA typed back to specific sires to insure that the product that they would get would not just be a quality grade, but source verification to the genetic foundation by which this product could be identified. This fact would be the most compelling to everyone in the industry.

It was because of this branded beef program that we decided, along with several other producers, to start the American Celtic Cattle Association for the Registering of the Irish Black® breed and Irish Red® breed cattle to keep these gene traits pure.

This is why we run Irish Black® breed and Irish Red® breed cattle and would like to offer them to others to purchase and be a part of this great new industry for the Irish Black® breed Cattle.